“This is the group we are working to engage, and their latent/unharnessed energy is probably 100 times greater than the life-extension community at present.”37 Spoken like a true connector. It is worth noting that connectors are not always attached to one maven; in fact, they usually aren’t because they tend to know many mavens.
Christine Peterson is another connector spreading the longevity meme. She cofounded the Foresight Institute for Nanotechnology, which works to promote the upsides, and help avoid the dangers, of nanotechnology and similar life-changing developments.38 Nanotechnology will play a big role in life-extension efforts in multiple ways, including drug development and biosensors. And even though Peterson is still the president of the Foresight Institute, she also organizes many successful conferences, including one called the Personalized Life Extension Conference: Anti-Aging Strategies for a Long Healthy Life.39 If that sounds like a fringe conference, think again.

Hurlbut has also made a statement that encapsulates the bioconservative fallacy as I see it. He asserts that he is “not convinced” that life extension would be good for us – and leaves it at that. He thus insinuates, without quite saying, that we should adopt the precautionary principle with regard to life extension and avoid developing it because we are uncertain whether it will benefit mankind. But this is utterly without justification. In what other context would we regard an action (or inaction) that hastens someone’s death as the safer option? Even in the tragic case of Terry Schiavo a commentator not generally noted for his progressive views – President Bush – stated that it is best to “err on the side of life.” Yet those who doubt the benefits of life extension argue that condemning 100,000 people every day to an unnecessarily (as it will eventually be) early death on the basis of their age is a policy that needs no more justification than an uncertainty regarding whether life extension will be good for us.

…

Yet those who doubt the benefits of life extension argue that condemning 100,000 people every day to an unnecessarily (as it will eventually be) early death on the basis of their age is a policy that needs no more justification than an uncertainty regarding whether life extension will be good for us.
In responding to the suggestion that Kass’s “wisdom of repugnance” actually constitutes a strong argument for life extension, Hurlbut has noted that “Young children love their grandparents. They don’t find them repulsive. They see in them the beauty of the generative spirit, of the nurturing mind.” But this fails to address the actual question: Would those children be happier or sadder if their grandparents were not only wise and loving but also youthful?
Hurlbut’s reluctance to confront the true issues is also revealed in his attitude to the question whether he is against extended lives per se or only against an abrupt extension of life expectancy. He has responded by saying that he regards extreme life extension as “biologically unlikely.”

…

Transhumanism as we know it today finally began to take form in the latter part of the ­twentieth century. Champions of life extension played a central and persistent part in this development. Not all advocates of extending the maximum human lifespan had well-developed ideas beyond that single goal, but many had at least some sense that the same technological advances that could deliver longer, healthier lives could also enable us to change ourselves in other ways. The “father of cryonics,” Robert Ettinger, was one of the latter. After explaining in his first book, The Prospect of Immortality (1964), that we could have another chance at life by preserving ourselves at ultra-low temperatures at the point of clinical death, his 1972 Man into Superman explored other transformative possibilities, and explicitly used the term “transhuman.” Another enduring supporter of life extension and cryonics, Saul Kent, not only wrote practically and speculatively about extending the human lifespan, but also about other possibilities in his 1974 book, Future Sex.

After all, it would be pointless to live until you were 150 if you spend those last 50 years in a wheelchair, with just a faint pulse signaling to loved-ones that you are indeed still alive.
When people think of anti-aging, they think of oxidative stress, antioxidants, expensive face creams and the like. However this is far too narrow a definition for anti-aging as I see it. I prefer to use the term life-extension, which is more descriptive of what it is I am looking to achieve with this book. Oh, and in the interests of disclosure, this book contains no secret tips on how to keep your skin looking its best – there are more than enough books on that already.
Life extension is not just about eating broccoli and lathering Crème de la Mer on your face each night. It’s also about playing the odds. Each poor decision you make regarding your health accumulates. For example, imagine that you smoke a pack a day of cigarettes ever each, drink a six pack of beer each night, drink a liter of Coca Cola each day while you work, take cocaine on weekends with your buddies, ride a high-powered motorbike everywhere (sometimes without a helmet), go skydiving each weekend, surf in an area notorious for great white sharks, have a high-stress job, rarely eat fruit or vegetables and eat a diet based primarily around junk food.

…

Aging is a complicated process that includes a range of parameters health, cognitive function, and level of physical mobility. Who is actually older – the 80 year old who can run a marathon and write a novel or a 30 year old with type-2 diabetes that sits on the couch all day because of a bad back and muscle soreness? As part of this thinking we need to broaden our definition of anti-aging far beyond the concept of life-extension. I think a better target would be “life-extension + life-optimization”.
Despite this, some researchers believe that by targeting one, you naturally target the other. The latest issue of the Public Policy & Aging Report (PP&AR), titled The Longevity Dividend: Geroscience Meets Geropolitics, states that the best way to achieve improved longevity and quality of life is by targeting the slowing down of the process of biological aging rather than targeting the individual diseases separately.

…

For example, imagine that you smoke a pack a day of cigarettes ever each, drink a six pack of beer each night, drink a liter of Coca Cola each day while you work, take cocaine on weekends with your buddies, ride a high-powered motorbike everywhere (sometimes without a helmet), go skydiving each weekend, surf in an area notorious for great white sharks, have a high-stress job, rarely eat fruit or vegetables and eat a diet based primarily around junk food.
How long do you think you will live? Each of your poor diet and lifestyle choices is like playing a game of Russian roulette. One day there will be a bullet in the chamber. So life extension is about a holistic plan that incrementally decreases your odds of dying by misadventure or developing a preventable disease. This is all about reducing risk, not about guaranteeing anything. Sometimes people can become fatalistic when they hear of the health fanatic that dropped dead at 40 with a heart attack. If it can happen to that guy, why bother?
There are always going to be exceptions and people with certain genetic issues that may predispose them to particular problems.

pages: 390words: 109,870

Radicals Chasing Utopia: Inside the Rogue Movements Trying to Change the World
by
Jamie Bartlett

Over the last decade, technology has opened up transhuman possibilities that were once just science fiction. Life extension is now seriously studied in leading universities, while robotics and artificial intelligence receive millions of dollars of investment. There are now tens of thousands of self-declared transhumanists based all over the world, including influential people at the heart of the world’s tech scene. Ray Kurzweil, a firm believer in the ‘singularity moment’ (the point at which artificial intelligence becomes so advanced that it begins to produce new and ever more advanced versions of itself), is a senior engineer at Google. Billionaire Peter Thiel—co-founder of PayPal, influential Silicon Valley investor and a member of President Donald Trump’s transition team—is also a self-declared transhumanist and has invested millions of dollars into life extension and artificial-intelligence projects.

…

They were all viewed as unnatural, and immoral, not so long ago.
But the science is not almost there. Like every techno-utopian, Zoltan appears to flit with misleading ease between science and fiction, taking any promising piece of research as proof of victory. The three main transhumanist technologies that excite transhumanists like Zoltan are life extension, cryonic freezing and mind uploading. Each of them is advancing quickly. But they are also highly speculative.
Radical life extension seeks to use a variety of medical advances—tissue rejuvenation, regenerative medicine, gene therapy, molecular repair—to slow and eventually stop the process of ageing. Ageing, after all, is simply an accumulation of damage to cells, tissues and molecules, and so it stands to reason there are molecular and cellular solutions.

Another enthusiastic and readable immortalist is Ray Kurzweil, as reflected in his many books and articles on the subject, most notably Fantastic Voyage: Living Long Enough to Live Forever (with Terry Grossman, Rodale, 2004), Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever (also with Terry Grossman, Rodale, 2009) and The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking, 2005).
The Immortality Institute, an organization dedicated to promoting radical life extension, has also published a collection of articles on the science and philosophy of the immortalists (including by Kurzweil and de Grey) called The Scientific Conquest of Death: Essays on Infinite Lifespans (Libros en Red, 2004). At the time this book went to print, this collection was also available to download for free from imminst.org/book.
A philosophical defense of radical life extension is offered by the work of John Harris, for example in Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making People Better (Princeton University Press, 2007), whereas those altogether opposed to such attempts are well represented by Francis Fukuyama in his book Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (Profile Books, 2002).

…

A philosophical defense of radical life extension is offered by the work of John Harris, for example in Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making People Better (Princeton University Press, 2007), whereas those altogether opposed to such attempts are well represented by Francis Fukuyama in his book Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (Profile Books, 2002).
Bryan Appleyard’s aforementioned How to Live Forever or Die Trying and Jonathan Weiner’s Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality (HarperCollins, 2010) both give good (somewhat skeptical) layman’s accounts of the modern life-extension movement’s aims and leading personalities.
The demographer who calculated that curing cancer would add only three years to our lives was S. Jay Olshansky, and the pessimistic view of the possibility of radical life extension can be found in his book (with Bruce A. Carnes) The Quest for Immortality: Science at the Frontiers of Aging (W. W. Norton, 2001). An excellent overview of the science of life, death, aging and immortality can be found in The Living End by the gerontologist Guy Brown (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

…

Staying alive indefinitely is a continuation of staying alive here and now; it is our day-to-day struggle for survival extended without end. It therefore begins with the basics, the things that all humans need to keep going: food and drink, shelter and defenses. As societies develop, they refine the provision of these essentials, through collaborative efforts, specialization of labor and passing on of skills. At its core, a civilization is a collection of life-extension technologies: agriculture to ensure food in steady supply, clothing to stave off cold, architecture to provide shelter and safety, better weapons for hunting and defense, medicine to combat injury and disease.
But whereas most people are satisfied with applying these technologies to themselves, their families or their villages, the First Emperor had a much grander vision. He ruled an empire, and his intention was to make it everlasting, with himself forever at its head.

Longevity: To the Limits and Beyond (Research and Perspectives in Longevity)
by
Jean-Marie Robine,
James W. Vaupel,
Bernard Jeune,
Michel Allard

This mutation behaves as a singlegene and results in a 65 % extension of mean life span and a 110 % extension of
maximum life span. The mutant has essentially normal rates of development and
fertility. The extended life span is due to a three-fold slowing in the exponential
rate of mortality increase (Johnson 1990). Four other mutations lead to significant extension of adult life span in C. elegans. spe-26 mutants result in life extensions of about 65 % for the hermaphrodite and the mated male (Van Voorhies
1992; Murakami and Johnson 1996), although recent observations (Gems and
Riddle 1996) suggest that the life extension may be artifactual and result from
inappropriate comparisons with wild type. daf-2 mutants result in a more than
Identifying and Cloning Longevity-Determining Genes in the Nematode
159
two-fold extension of mean life span (Kenyon et al. 1993), and this extension is
blocked by the action of daf-16.

…

For
detailed knowledge and background on the nematode system, we sugg.est Wood
(1988).
Several hundred laboratories across the world use C. elegans to study development, behavior, and physiology. C. elegans reproduces by self-fertilization, yet
has a facultative male, which makes it extremely easy to identify mutations, even
those that affect life span (Klass 1983; Duhon et al. 1996). For analysis of life
extension and other life history traits, the lack of inbreeding depression is
extremely important (Johnson and Wood 1982; Johnson and Hutchinson 1993).
Moreover, because of its small genome size (10 8 base pairs) and genetic sophistication, C. elegans has been chosen as a model organism for the Human Genome
Project. The genome has been almost entirely cloned and is available in a variety
of contiguous arrays (Coulson et al. 1988); the genome is currently about 60 %
sequenced (Wilson et al. 1994) and the entire sequence should be finished by the
end of 1998.

…

Larsen et al. (1995) showed that daf-23 doubles
the life expectancy, and also showed that daf-2 interacts with daf-12 to cause an
almost four-fold enhancement of life prolongation. Wong et al. (1995) reported
that several alleles of a new gene, elk-I, which have altered the normal course of
the cell cycle and of development, also have a increased life span. The several
unpublished cases of additional life-extension loci suggest that the total number
of gerontogenes in C. elegans may be near 10.
Physiological Role of These Gerontogenes
All of the mutations mentioned above, with the exception of age-I, also alter
some other aspect of the normal development or physiology of the nematode
(Table 1). spe-26 mutants are male sterile, indicating a defective step in fertilization that turns out to be at the point of spermatid formation (Varkey et al. 1995).

Never in history have so many generations been alive at the same time. Living long enough to know your great-grandchildren has become the norm, even with delayed childbearing. Among the things that the new elders are doing with their power—and their accumulated wealth—is directing ever more sophisticated research toward life extension. I have heard biotech scientists seriously ask one another, off the record, “What if we cure death?” Whether or not effective immortality actually comes, its prospect is now in sight, and that itself begins to change things.
The best science fiction on life extension is Bruce Sterling’s Holy Fire (01996). In its deliberately stable world dominated by the “medical-industrial complex,” one character explains, “When you live a really long time, it changes everything. The whole structure of the world, politics, money, religion, culture, everything that used to be human.

…

People complain about overwhelming masses of information on the Web, but one of its inventors, Tim Berners-Lee, comments, “To be overloaded by the existence of so much on the Web is like being overloaded by the mass of a beautiful countryside. You don’t have to visit it, but it’s nice to know it’s there. Especially the variety and freedom.”
The Internet may be showing the way to live with an infinite amount of past in infinite detail, and still encourage freedom to innovate without the need of violent revolution. Add in drastic life extension, due soon, and you get quite a different world, one that might say about our world: “Can you imagine what it was like when people and programs had to die, whether they wanted to or not? No wonder it took so long for culture to get anywhere. Everything and everyone was starting over all the time—the same dumb mistakes over and over again. People were either pastless or trapped in the past. Their lives were as beautiful and tragic and stupid as waves breaking on the beach.”

…

To be sure none can be solved in a year, but all can yield to decades of focused work if we understand that the health of civilization is at stake.
The toughest problem will be building software that will forgive us our trespasses and trespass not against us. There is no real glimmer yet how to approach the question but also no reason to give up on it. As for computer professionals routinely thinking and acting with long-term responsibility, that may come gradually as a by-product of the Year 2000 comeuppance, of life extension, of environmental lessons, and of globalization (island Earth). At issue here is how to address the management of digital continuity over time, how to shorten the digital dark age.
Pure information can have astonishing longevity. In 1090 C.E. the Chinese genius Su Sung built a monumental water-driven mechanical clock for his emperor. It was dazzling, two centuries ahead of anything like it in Europe.

The SIR2 gene represses genes that generate ribosomal wastes that build up in yeast cells and lead to their eventual death; low-calorie diets restrict reproduction but are helpful to the functioning of the SIR2 gene. This may provide a molecular explanation for why laboratory rats fed a low-calorie diet live up to 40 percent longer than other rats.7
Biologists such as Guarente have suggested that there might someday be a relatively simple genetic route to life extension in humans: while it is not practical to feed people such restricted diets, there may be other ways of enhancing the functioning of the SIR genes. Other gerontologists, such as Tom Kirkwood, assert flatly that aging is the result of a complex series of processes at the level of cells, organs, and the body as a whole, and that there is therefore no single, simple mechanism that controls aging and death.8
If a genetic shortcut to immortality exists, the race is already on within the biotech industry to find it.

…

But past a certain age, the correlation between age and ability begins to go in the opposite direction. With life expectancies only in the 40s or 50s for most of human history, societies could rely on normal generational succession to take care of this problem. Mandatory retirement ages came into vogue only in the late nineteenth century, when increasing numbers of people began to survive into old age.d
Life extension will wreak havoc with most existing age-graded hierarchies. Such hierarchies traditionally assume a pyramidal structure because death winnows the pool of competitors for the top ranks, abetted by artificial constraints such as the widely held belief that everyone has the “right” to retire at age 65. With people routinely living and working into their 60s, 70s, 80s, and even 90s, however, these pyramids will increasingly resemble squat trapezoids or even rectangles.

…

Older people will have to move down the social hierarchy not just to retrain but to make room for new entrants coming up from the bottom. If they don’t, generational warfare will join class and ethnic conflict as a major dividing line in society. Getting older people out of the way of younger ones will become a significant struggle, and societies may have to resort to impersonal, institutionalized forms of ageism in a future world of expanded life expectancies.
Other social effects of life extension will depend heavily on the exact way that the geriatric revolution plays itself out—that is, whether people will remain physically and mentally vigorous throughout these lengthening life spans, or whether society will increasingly come to resemble a giant nursing home.
The medical profession is dedicated to the proposition that anything that can defeat disease and prolong life is unequivocally a good thing.

For the problems that we do encounter, the key challenge is to express them precisely in words (and sometimes in equations). Having done that, we have the ability to find the ideas to confront and resolve each such problem .
·We can apply the enormous leverage provided by the acceleration of technology. A notable example is achieving radical life extension through "a bridge to a bridge to a bridge" (applying today's knowledge as a bridge to biotechnology, which in turn will bridge us to the era of nanotechnology).4 This offers a way to live indefinitely now, even though we don't yet have all the knowledge necessary for radical life extension. In other words we don't have to solve every problem today. We can anticipate the capability of technologies that are coming—in five years or ten years or twenty—and work these into our plans. That is how I design my own technology projects, and we can do the same with the large problems facing society and with our own lives.

…

We have seen comparable mistakes during earlier paradigm shifts—for example, during the early railroad era (1830s), when the equivalent of the Internet boom and bust led to a frenzy of railroad expansion.
Another error that prognosticators make is to consider the transformations that will result from a single trend in to day's world as if nothing else will change. A good example is the concern that radical life extension will result in overpopulation and the exhaustion of limited material resources to sustain human life, which ignores comparably radical wealth creation from nanotechnology and strong AI. For example, nanotechnology-based manufacturing devices in the 2020s will be capable of creating almost any physical product from inexpensive raw materials and information.
I emphasize the exponential-versus-linear perspective because it's the most important failure that prognosticators make in considering future trends.

…

—SAMUEL BUTLER, 1863 LETTER, "DARWIN AMONG THE MACHINES"1
T
he first half of the twenty-first century will be characterized by three overlapping revolutions—in Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics. These will usher in what I referred to earlier as Epoch Five, the beginning of the Singularity. We are in the early stages of the "G" revolution today. By understanding the information processes underlying life, we are starting to learn to reprogram our biology to achieve the virtual elimination of disease, dramatic expansion of human potential, and radical life extension. Hans Moravec points out, however, that no matter how successfully we fine-tune our DNA-based biology, humans will remain "second-class robots," meaning that biology will never be able to match what we will be able to engineer once we fully understand biology's principles of operation.2
The "N" revolution will enable us to redesign and rebuild—molecule by molecule—our bodies and brains and the world with which we interact, going far beyond the limitations of biology.

The most chilling example of this scenario is seen in Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker series of novels, where self-replicating doomsday machines are out there watching, ready to destroy life on a planet just as it begins to acquire advanced technology.
Another variant of the singularity takes current efforts to fight disease and projects them into radical life extension, where technology helps us overcome all our mental and physical limitations. Ray Kurzweil has been the most eloquent proponent of this future. He’s a founder of the Singularity University, where the tech world’s movers and shakers pay tens of thousands of dollars for short courses on the cutting edge in AI and nanotechnology. Critics have mocked the idea of the singularity as the “rapture of the nerds,” and they’ve noted that only the wealthy will benefit from radical-life-extension technology.
The goal of researchers like Kurzweil is simple: immortality. He thinks that medical nanotechnology will conquer disease, aging, and death.

…

In 1857, he was born into an impoverished family of Polish immigrants in a small Russian town, the fifth of eighteen children. At the age of ten, he developed scarlet fever, leaving him deaf and isolated. By the age of fourteen, his mother had died and he had given up formal schooling.
A reclusive teenager, he moved to Moscow so he could spend long hours at a local library, where he studied physics and astronomy. At the library he was influenced by Nikolai Fyodorov, a futurist who advocated radical life extension and immortality and who thought that the future of humanity lay in space. He also stumbled on the works of Jules Verne and became inspired by Verne’s tales of space travel. Tsiolkovsky’s family recognized his talent but worried that he was studying obsessively and forgetting to eat. When he was nineteen, his father brought him back home and helped him get a teaching credential so he could earn a living.

…

Once they learn how to miniaturize them, biohackers will implant themselves with medical sensors that can talk to a smartphone and a device that will let fingers “see” by echolocation.31 This goes beyond sensory extension to the creation of entirely new senses.
The philosophical movement that forms an umbrella for cybernetics and cyborgs is called transhumanism. Transhumanism is a worldwide cultural and intellectual movement that seeks to use technology to improve the human condition. Radical life extension is one aspect, as is the enhancement of physical and mental capabilities. Two prominent transhumanists are Nick Bostrom, a University of Oxford philosopher who has assessed various risks to the long-term survival of humanity, and Ray Kurzweil, the engineer and inventor who popularized the idea of the singularity, a time in the not-too-distant future when technology will enable us to transcend our physical limitations.

The pattern in every one is the same: discovery of S-space; exploitation of S-space, as a means of subjective life extension and interstellar space travel; and then, after a shorter or longer period, the realization that S-space existence, sufficiently continued, brings with it physical decline and finally death. As a means of seeking immortality, S-space is a blind alley.”
“Immortality!” It was not clear how many people said the word, but it lingered as a murmur around the chamber.
“Let us say, potential immortality. No one knows the maximum attainable life-span of an intelligence, but this we do know: maximal life extension is impossible for an embodied form that uses S-space, T-state, or any of their variations. Ultimately, time consumes flesh. Maximal life extension requires conversion to immaterial form.”
“Pure spirit,” Emil Garville said softly.

…

Sy wore an expression that Peron and Elissa would have found unfamiliar. He seemed uneasy, and lacking in confidence. “I read it wrong. I thought the reason for being here in Gulf City was safety from outside interference, and control of S-space. The whole advantage of being an ‘Immortal’ was presented to us as increased subjective life span — but now I wonder about that.”
“You are right to do so. We have life-extension methods available, ones that came out of S-space research and allow increased life span in normal space. And probably they will let the subject enjoy life more keenly, too. But you can’t solve the problem thrown at us by the Kermel Objects unless you can work on it for a long time. That means Gulf City, and it means S-space.” She stood up. “Will you work on this? And will you help me to persuade your friends to do the same?”

…

“The beings who met us at Urstar said not. You yourself just quoted what they did say: Time consumes flesh.”
“True. But I’ll also quote something else they said: they don’t know everything, and the universe contains many unsolved mysteries. The aliens at Urstar know more than humans — at least, they know more than humans did at the time we left Gulf City. Suppose there are other states, and other forms of life extension, possible for our species but not for theirs? Also, exploration of human physical potentials is just one form of research. Some of the free-space colonies may be devoted to social experiments, or pure physics research, or fields of science totally new to us.”
Charlene had never seen Sy so talkative. She asked, “So some humans have returned to the planets, and are living in normal space. And others have established free-space colonies, to explore we don’t know what.

As Edgar notes in King Lear, “Ripeness is all.” You don’t get to ripeness by eating apple peel for breakfast.…
When life extension supplants life quality as a goal, you get the desolation of Canto the monkey. Living to 120 holds zero appeal for me. Canto looks like he’s itching to be put out of his misery.…
We don’t understand what the mind secretes. The process of aging remains full of enigma. But I’d bet on jovial Owen outliving wretched Canto.…
Laughter extends life. There’s little of it in the low-cal world and little doubt pudgy Owen will have the last laugh. 1
If your goal is to live as long as possible, there is a long list, an endless list, of things to avoid. The good news is that life-extension need not be complicated.
For the gents, it may be as simple as blocking a few websites and curbing a little maleness.

…

It’s impossible to say, which is why I’ll use resveratrol short-term at higher doses for endurance while tracking blood markers, but I won’t use it indefinitely for life-extension. Telomerase activators like TA-65, another example, are purported to extend our chromosomal countdown clocks called “telomeres.” TA-65 can cost up to $15,000 per year. Is it possible that, by amplifying cell replication, you increase the likelihood of dangerous cancerous growth? Perhaps. It’s simply beyond our technology to guarantee one outcome or another, so I’m avoiding TA-65 as well.
But if not in global therapies, where is the promised land?
Until we can go to Walmart and get a RoboCop makeover with regenerative medicine, there are a few alternatives in a second short list.
These are the protocols I am currently using.
All of them are low-cost, low-tech, and low-risk. Most of them also provide athletic or body composition benefits, even if their life-extension effects are later debunked:
1.

…

To experience this effect for yourself, do a single session of pre-hab testing from the “Pre-Hab” chapter.
TAKE A COLD BATH ONE HOUR PRIOR TO BED.
The Japanese have longer average lifespans than most other nationalities, including Americans, whom they beat by more than four years. One explanation researchers have proposed is that the regular ofuro, or hot bath at bedtime, increases melatonin release and is related to mechanisms for life extension. Paradoxically, according to one of the Stanford professors who taught the sleep biology class I took circa 2002, cold is a more effective signaler (aka zeitgeber, or “time giver”) for sleep onset.
Perhaps the ofuro effect was related to the subsequent rapid cooling? Not eager to kill my swimmies with hot baths, I opted for direct cold.
I tested the effect of combining shorter-than-usual 10-minute ice baths with low-dose melatonin (1.5–3 milligrams) one hour prior to sleep.

Today there are around 6,000 members from more than 100 countries – an eclectic mix of self-confessed technology geeks, scientists, libertarians, academics and activists like Zoltan (who describes himself as a writer, activist and campaigner all-in-one). Together they work on a dazzling array of cutting-edge technology. Everything from life extension, anti-ageing, robotics, artificial intelligence (Marvin Minsky, considered one of the inventors of artificial intelligence, is a prominent transhumanist), cybernetics, space colonisation, virtual reality and cryonics. But most transhumanist technology focuses on life extension, and technological upgrades to the brain and body.
It’s the possibility of a tech-powered ‘great leap forward’ that excites transhumanists like Zoltan, who believes the possible benefits of near- and medium-term technology are too important to ignore. In addition to the personal goal of immortality, he believes synthetic biology could solve food shortages, genetic medicine may help cure diseases, bionic limbs already do transform the lives of disabled people.

…

Transhumanists might be small in number, but they are, for the most part, extremely committed to the cause. Zoltan tells me he is planning a number of publicity stunts in the next couple of years to bring the movement to a wider audience. This includes marching with a group of robots and a large coffin to Union Square in San Francisco to protest against what he sees as a lack of government investment in life-extension science. Many transhumanists are ‘biohackers’ – who, like Anders, experiment with introducing new technology into their own body directly. In 2013, transhumanist Richard Lee became the first person to have implanted a headphone in his ear. In 2012, in Essen, Germany, Tim Cannon, a tranhumanist biohacker, implanted a small computer and wireless battery inside his arm. A number of American transhumanists have recently collaborated to crowdfund a ‘seastead’, a floating community located in international waters, outside of legal jurisdiction (in 2013, they became one of the first charities to accept Bitcoin donations).

…

Whether it was anarchist Bitcoin programmers, trolls, extremists, pornographers or enthusiastic self-harmers, all were more welcoming and pleasant, more interesting and multifaceted, than I’d imagined. Ultimately, the dark net is nothing more than a mirror of society. Distorted, magnified and mutated by the strange and unnatural conditions of life online – but still recognisably us.
* * *
fn1 Anders will be frozen at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Arizona, which charges a total of $200,000 ($215,000 for UK residents) for Whole Body Cryopreservation.
fn2 I cannot say that Zerzan was unwilling to engage with the transhumanists. When he learned that I’d been communicating with Zoltan, he sent him the following, unsolicited message:
I understand that you are in contact with Jamie Bartlett regarding his book project, dealing with the internet and technology more generally.

Yet I left that diner absolutely certain that sometime in the next decade, the far frontier would open for business.
I also left the diner a little gobsmacked. In less time than it took to drink a cup of coffee, a paradigm had shattered — science fiction had become science fact. On the way home, I started to wonder about other paradigms. After all, if private spaceships were possible, what about all the other sci-fi mainstays? What about bionics? Robotics? Flying cars? Artificial life? Life extension? Asteroid mining? What about those more ephemeral topics: the future of human evolution, the possibilities of downloadable consciousness? I made a long list — and that list defined large parts of the next two decades of my career.
Tomorrowland is the result of that journey. The pieces in this book come from an assortment of major publications — the New York Times, Wired, Atlantic Monthly, to name a few — and all were penned between 2000 and 2014.

…

The second section — The Future Out There — is about the ways science and technology are radically reshaping our world. Here we’ll cover everything from on-world paradigm shifts, like the birth of the world’s first genetically engineered insect, to off-world paradigm shifts, like the birth of the asteroid mining industry. Finally, in The Future Uncertain, we’ll examine the gray areas, those explosive collisions between science and culture — for example, the use of steroids for life extension or the use of synthetic biology for the creation of bioweapons — where lines are being crossed and controversy reigns, and no one is certain what tomorrow brings.
This last bit is no small thing. All of the technologies described in this book are disruptive technologies, though not as we traditionally define the word. Typically, disruptive technologies are those that displace an existing technology and disrupt an existing market, but the breakthroughs described herein do more than dismantle value chains — they destroy longstanding beliefs.

The reference is to the famous characterization of capitalism as
"gales of creative destruction" in Schumpeter 1942.
19. McNeill 2000, pp. 193-194.
20. "Engineering and aging," IEEE Spectrum 41 (2004), no. 9: 10,
31-35. For much more on this controversial possibility, see de Grey
204
Notes to Chapters 4 and 5
2004. Aubrey D. N. J. de Grey is a well-known and controversial advocate of what might be called the "radical human life extension"
school. Whether life extension is possible, and if so when it will be
available, and how long lives will eventually be, remain highly contentious within the relevant research communities. Interestingly, other
science and policy communities, such as those associated with sustainability, are generally not attending to these possibilities, despite their
obviously challenging implications.
Chapter 5
1. Similar dynamics arise in law, especially in arbitration and litigation, as one of us experienced in many years of legal practice; what is
perceived by the Enlightenment rationalist as inefficient communication is, in fact, the complex process of muddling through complex
legal, emotional, and factual tangles to workable solutions that arise
from the fuzziness of the discussion, not from any failure to perceive
the "rational" more quickly.

…

The net result is that it becomes necessary to
design toward better military productivity, with productivity
measured as mission accomplishment per soldier lost. This is
one reason why the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency is a major funder of research on how to keep soldiers
in peak physical condition longer (which is dual-use research
insofar as it also provides the scientific and technical basis
for radical life-extension technologies). The substitution of
military robots for people is an exact parallel to the substitution of capital for labor early in the Industrial Revolution.
Robots, in other words, are another expression of the search
for efficiency.
So yes, LARs will accomplish the Level I function of saving
soldiers' lives. But they will also be counted on to fulfill a Level
II, if not a Level III function: projecting power when cultural
and demographic trends militate against casualties.

Experts suggest that you use only synthetic melatonin, which carries no risk of transmitting animal brain diseases.
I personally prefer a formulation that Dr. Pierpaoli himself created. (He wanted to make sure there was a pharmaceutical-grade melatonin available without prescription, and his formulation, known as TI-MElatonin, is a 3 mg tablet that also includes zinc, to help potentiate the melatonin, and selenium, for the immune system.) The Life Extension Foundation has also created a good-quality time-released melatonin in 300 mcg (0.3 mg) capsules. These might be helpful for those who find half a 3 mg tablet too high a dose.
You’ll sometimes hear that melatonin is not recommended for people with autoimmune disease. For those women who have thyroid problems due to autoimmune Hashimoto’s or Graves’ disease, this may seem problematic. But it’s important to note that the concern was reportedly based on an isolated case where melatonin was linked to autoimmune hepatitis.

But, of course, you could equally well argue that, with human-altering technologies, it might be just as reasonable to reduce men’s proclivity to violence, extend their life spans and give them wombs. Sparrow cites the ‘gap’ some men feel by not being able to bear children (I’m not one of them) and wonders, if there is a demand for male pregnancy, should it be an option freely available if the technology can be made safe?
I suddenly realise that for these assembled academics, the prospect of fundamental alterations of our biology (including radical life extension and human enhancement) is a given. They’re not talking about what happens if it becomes possible, they’re discussing what we might do when it’s an option. And this worries many transhumanist critics. Sparrow later tells me, ‘The implications of taking transhumanism seriously are so radical and implausible that I think we should be much less inclined to do so.’
The seminar ends, and as the attendees dissipate (several I notice lighting cigarettes as they leave the building), I introduce myself to my host.

…

He is, after all, the joint founder of the World Transhumanist Association, which ‘advocates the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities’ supporting ‘the development of and access to new technologies that enable everyone to enjoy better minds, better bodies and better lives.’
I’m keen to understand where his optimism about transhumanist outcomes comes from, when so many people I mention the idea to visibly recoil. What drives him to bang the transhumanist drum in a world generally hostile to the idea? Throughout our talk, I pose this question in various guises, and Bostrom always answers in the same spirit – that, in his view, human life extension and enhancement will allow us not simply to live longer, but to enjoy living much more. When I ask, ‘What inspires and motivates you?’ he cites his reading, his colleagues, but also states ‘I guess through feeling and experiencing something in this life and thinking “why can’t it always be as good as that?”’
This is the emotional driver at the core of the transhumanist dream. ‘It’s hard for a lot of people to see the problem – that life isn’t always as wonderful as it could be – and part of the reason for that is our biology.

…

To overcome this, the transhumanist project is developing technologies that can enable us to become all that we are in potential, by changing not just the world around us but human biology as well.’ Well, it’s certainly more ambitious than getting a new kitchen. For him and many other transhumanists it’s not just ‘better than human,’ it’s also ‘have a better time than humans.’ And if you’re going to have a better time, why stop at seventy or eighty years?
‘Life extension is very central to me,’ he states. ‘First because for all the ordinary reasons we prefer to be alive rather than dead and, second, because if you think that the future might hold additional possibilities of radical enhancements of human capacity, the only way to get to experience that is to remain alive long enough, until those technologies have been developed.’
Remember, when transhumanists talk of enhancement, they’re going way beyond the capacity to switch on that fleeting ‘two pints in: brilliant at pool’ ability at will.

the condensed idea
Genetic prophesy
timeline
1997 Release of the movie Gattaca about genetic enhancement
2008 Knome offers genome sequencing to individuals for $350,000
2009 Knome drops its price to $99,500
2012 23andMe offers gene sequencing for $299
2018 Cost falls to $49 via Walmart
2020 Hospitals and insurers offer free genome profiling
2030 Google dating based upon ideal DNA profiles
2050 DNA database creates human underclass
22 Regenerative medicine
Is it possible to prevent or reverse the aging process, perhaps by fiddling with tired tissues and cells, or even growing new organs inside a laboratory? Some people regard this as a pipe dream. Others see it instead as increasingly inevitable.
Physician, heal thyself. What if you are an aging surgeon and parts of your body are worn out? Options may include stem-cell therapy, the transplant of an artificial organ (a kidney grown in vitro), the printing of replacement teeth or bones using a fabricator, general life extension, some more hair, or perhaps some new fingers? This last idea may seem a little far-fetched, but if newts can repair themselves why not human beings? One way to do so might be to persuade cells to return to a younger state—in other words, trick the body into believing that it’s a young child once again. This sounds incredible, but there’s a serious possibility that by the end of this century, and possibly a lot sooner, human beings will be able to regrow lost limbs.

…

the condensed idea
We prefer our robots cuddly
timeline
1950 I, Robot short stories by Isaac Asimov
1999 Sony’s Aibo dog
2000 Hasbro’s FurReal robotic pets
2004 WowWee’s Robosapien
2005 Cornell’s first self-replicating robot
2006 Amazing Allysen interactive doll
2016 Widespread use of agricultural robots
2030 98 percent of Korean homes contain a robot
35 Transhumanism
Could emerging technologies enable individuals to radically extend life spans or even transcend the very idea of aging itself? As you might expect, transhumanism has annexed various philosophical ideas, especially in California, to become a kind of quasi religion or a quest for immortality.
At one level transhumanism intersects with some fairly practical theories regarding life extension. For example, the adoption of a very low-calorie diet has been shown in some studies to significantly extend the life of mice and some say that the idea can be applied to people too. Developments in regenerative medicine (see Chapter 22) tap into some of these urges and impulses too, although beyond this, things can get a little weird.
Some people, for example, believe that it’s possible to use cryonics (i.e. low-temperature preservation techniques) to keep dead people in a state of suspended animation until future medical technologies allow them to be brought back to life—although it’s much more likely that they’ll just be defrosted into a kind of slush.

• Some of the major technological marvels of today’s world are not doing so much to create new jobs. They’ll bring big gains but without putting too many people back to work, IT specialists of the right kind excluded.
The internet is wonderful, but it’s not saving the revenue-generating sector of the economy.
The forward march of technology has indeed continued, but it’s giving us Twitter and better painkillers and some life extension when we are old and sick. And I love Twitter and I’ll probably value those painkillers, too, once I need them. We’re living the age-old wish of getting away from money, money, money and finding some of our biggest innovative successes in sectors that are good for us but not revenue intensive. We’re getting away from materialism, at least in some critical regards. We may still lust after the fancy car, but I see a lot of people looking inward.

But Eos, in her haste, forgot to ask for eternal youth for him. So Tithonus became immortal, but his body aged. Unable to die, he became more and more decrepit and decayed, living an eternity with pain and suffering.
So that is the challenge facing the science of the twenty-first century. Scientists are now reading the book of life, which includes the complete human genome, and which promises us miraculous advances in understanding aging. But life extension without health and vigor can be an eternal punishment, as Tithonus tragically found out.
By the end of this century, we too shall have much of this mythical power over life and death. And this power won’t be limited to healing the sick but will be used to enhance the human body and even create new life-forms. It won’t be through prayers and incantations, however, but through the miracle of biotechnology.

…

More likely, it will be a combination of several methods:
1. growing new organs as they wear out or become diseased, via tissue engineering and stem cells
2. ingesting a cocktail of proteins and enzymes that are designed to increase cell repair mechanisms, regulate metabolism, reset the biological clock, and reduce oxidation
3. using gene therapy to alter genes that may slow down the aging process
4. maintaining a healthy lifestyle (exercise and a good diet)
5. using nanosensors to detect diseases like cancer years before they become a problem
POPULATION, FOOD, AND POLLUTION
But one nagging question is: If life expectancy can be increased, then will we suffer from overpopulation? No one knows.
Delaying the aging process brings up a host of social implications. If we live longer, won’t we overpopulate the earth? But some point out that the bulk of life extension has already happened, with life expectancy exploding from forty-five to seventy to eighty in just one century. Instead of creating a population explosion, it has arguably done the reverse. As people are living longer, they are pursuing careers and delaying childbearing. In fact, the native European population is actually decreasing dramatically. So if people live longer and richer lives, they might space out their children accordingly, and have fewer of them.

Ransome says, looking up. “We can’t possibly do them at the same time.” He glances at me. “Lou was right. Even if you get a life extension treatment later, it can’t be done at the same time.”
Linda shrugs and looks down. Her shoulders are tense; her hands are fisted in her lap. I think she will not take the treatment without the promise of longer life. If I do it and she does not, we may not see each other again. I feel strange about that; she was in this unit before I was. I have seen her every working day for years.
“I will talk to the board about this,” Mr. Arakeen says, more calmly. “We’ll have to get more legal and medical advice. But if I understand you, some of you are demanding life extension treatment as part of Page 196
the package, at some time in the future, as a condition of participation, is that right?”

…

I put the coins in my pocket, tuck the packet of detergent in the light basket, and set the light basket on top of the dark one. Light should go on top of dark. That balances.
I can just see over them to walk down the hall. I fix the Chopin prelude in my mind and head for the laundry room. As usual on Friday nights, only Miss Kimberly is there. She is old, with fuzzy gray hair, but not as old as Miss Watson. I wonder if she thinks about the life extension treatments or if she is too old.
Miss Kimberly is wearing light-green knit slacks and a flowered top. She usually wears this on Fridays when it is warm. I think about what she wears instead of the smell in the laundry room. It is a harsh, sharp smell that I do not like.
“Good evening, Lou,” she says now. She has already done her wash and is putting her things into the left-hand dryer. She always uses the left-hand dryer.

One of the keenest reasons to want a middle-class distribution of wealth is to avoid a situation in which a small number of wealthy individuals live very long lives while no one else can afford the same life extensions.
In my breakfast conversations about artificial hearts with Marvin Minsky, so long ago, he proposed that life extension could become so cheap that it would be universal. What we’ve seen, though, is that when some things become very cheap, other things become very expensive. Printers are incredibly cheap, and yet ink for them is incredibly expensive. Phones are cheap and yet connectivity for them is insanely expensive. Wal-Mart is cheap, and yet jobs go away. Software is “free” and yet the Internet is not creating as many jobs as it destroys.
The talking seagull from the first chapter is probably more realistic than universal life extension for all in a world where clout and wealth flow to Siren Servers.
A great showdown will occur when lives are extended significantly for the first time.

He wasn’t looking for industry experience but for people he knew, people who were incredibly smart, people who were like him, Stanford friends like Reid Hoffman, Stanford Review alums like David Sacks and Keith Rabois, and Confinity’s cramped, spartan offices above a bike shop soon filled with carelessly dressed, badly groomed men in their twenties (Thiel was one of the oldest at thirty-two), chess players, math whizzes, libertarians, without distracting obligations like wives and children or time-wasting hobbies like sports and TV (one applicant was turned down because he admitted to enjoying shooting hoops). Some employees lived on junk food at their desks, others were on life-extension calorie-restricted diets. The company took out an ad in The Stanford Daily: “Think kick-ass stock options in a cool start-up are worth dropping out of college? We are hiring right now!” It became the first company in the history of the world to offer cryogenics as part of its employee benefits package.
Thiel was trying to build a successful business that would make him rich, but he also wanted to disrupt the world—in particular, the ancient technology of paper money and the oppressive system of monetary policy.

…

In spite of oscillating on the seatbelt question, Thiel had never lost the three-year-old’s primordial dismay at the news of death. He refused to submit to what he called “the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual.” He saw it as a problem to be solved, and the sooner the better. With the current state of medical research, he expected to live to be 120—a sorry compromise, given the grand possibilities of life extension. But 150 was becoming thinkable, and immortality wasn’t out of the question. In his last years, Steve Jobs had given speeches about how motivated he was by the prospect of death, but Thiel didn’t agree. Death was very demotivating. It ended up having a depressing effect, it gave a desperate tone to things and imposed constraints on what people tried to achieve. It would be healthier to live every day as though life were going to go on forever.

…

On the other hand, he shied away from investing in the area that would provide the most immediate help to struggling Americans—food and energy. Those were too regulated, too political. If there was something inegalitarian about his investments, every technological advance had an unequal component—you were doing the new thing, and the new thing could seldom be instantaneously transmitted to everybody. The starkest example was life extension: the most extreme form of inequality was between people who were alive and people who were dead. It was hard to get more unequal than that. The first people to live to be 150 would probably be rich—but Thiel believed that every technological breakthrough eventually improved the lives of most people, and anyway, none of it would happen if it were left to a popular vote.
* * *
The scientists at Halcyon Molecular were refugees from research universities, disenchanted with academic science, convinced that the best way to change the world was to start a company—ideal finds for Thiel, who believed that the latest bubble in the U.S. economy was education.

pages: 578words: 168,350

Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies
by
Geoffrey West

Among the more prominent ones are Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, whose foundation has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on aging research; Peter Thiel, a cofounder of PayPal, who has invested millions in biotech companies oriented toward solving the problem of aging; and Larry Page, a cofounder of Google, who started Calico (the California Life Company), whose focus is on aging research and life extension. And then there’s the health care mogul Joon Yun, who, though he didn’t make his fortune in classic high-tech, is based in Silicon Valley and is the sponsor of the $1 million Longevity Prize “dedicated to ending aging” through his foundation, the Palo Alto Institute.
Although I remain quite skeptical that any of these will achieve any significant success, they are worthy efforts and a great example of American philanthropy at work, regardless of the motivation.

…

Just to get a sense of how exceptional this is, the next oldest verified person was the American Sarah Knauss, who lived more than three years fewer than Jeanne, dying at the age of 119 years and 97 days. The next super-champs of long life lived almost two years fewer than Sarah, while the oldest person still alive today is the Italian Emma Murano, who is “only” in her 118th year.
The search for life extension can therefore be boiled down to two major categories: (1) The conservative challenge: how can the rest of us continue the upward march toward a longer life and approach the extraordinary achievements of Jeanne Calment and Sarah Knauss? (2) The radical challenge: is it possible to extend life span beyond the apparent maximum limit of approximately 125 years and live, for instance, to 225 years?

That’s partly because many major advances targeted early childhood deaths. Vaccination against serious diseases such as polio, for example, has hugely improved both childhood mortality figures (fewer children dying) and morbidity in terms of quality of life for survivors (fewer children permanently disabled as a result of polio).
There is a growing debate around the issue sometimes known as human life extension, which deals with extending the far end of life, old age. Human life extension refers to the concept that we can use interventions so that individuals will live to a greater age. But this takes us into difficult territory, both socially and scientifically. To understand why, it’s important to establish what ageing really is, and why it is so much more than just being alive for a long time.
One useful definition of ageing is ‘the progressive functional decline of tissue function that eventually results in mortality’2.

“How about an innovation incubator?”
“Boring too.”
So Teller thought for a while and finally asked, “So, are we taking moonshots?”
“That’s it,” answered Page, “that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
And that is exactly what they’re doing. Over the past few years, Google has repeatedly made headlines with the audacity of their moonshots, dedicating their skunk works to everything from space exploration and life extension to AI and robotics. In other words, as of right now, there is perhaps no other company in the world playing the skunk game at such an elevated level.
Over the next few pages, we’re going to examine exactly how Google takes moonshots, giving you an inside look at their skunk methodology and paying attention to which of Kelly Johnson’s initial ideas they’ve kept, which they’ve changed, and—from a psychological perspective—why.

The five-year shelf life of the Tylenol involved in the 1982 Tylenol murders was well outside the shelf life of any Tylenol product - with the notable exception of the Tylenol that Johnson & Johnson sold to the United States Department of Defense (DOD).
In 1973, the DOD sought to defer drug replacement costs for date sensitive stockpiles of prescription and OTC drugs by extending their useful life beyond the manufacturer’s original expiration date. Subsequently, the Office of Management and Budget and the General Accounting Office completed studies to determine the feasibility of a “shelf life extension program.” These agencies found that the shelf life of OTC drugs, generally two to three years, could safely be extended to five years under properly controlled storage conditions.
On July 1, 1975, the FDA and the Veterans Administration (VA) entered into a “Memo of Understanding” implementing a program to extend the expiration dates of the prescription and non-prescription drugs that the VA purchased.

…

Throughout the 1980s, the DOD contracted with the McNeil Consumer Products Company to buy Tylenol from all three of the Johnson & Johnson facilities that distributed Tylenol. The DOD purchased Tylenol in bulk containers for use in Military treatment facilities and VA hospitals and clinics. The DOD also purchased Tylenol for sale in the retail class of trade through its military commissaries. Because of the shelf-life extension program, all of the Tylenol sold to the DOD was given a shelf life of five years. This required separate bottling production runs so that the labels on the Tylenol bottles being sold to the DOD reflected the 5-year shelf life rather than the typical 3-year shelf life of the Tylenol bottled at the McNeil manufacturing plants. The 5-year shelf life of the Tylenol involved in the 1982 Tylenol murders indicates that it may have been intended for the DOD.

…

The three–year shelf life of Tylenol was mentioned in February 1986: Inquirer Wire Service (with contribution from Michael B. Coakley). “Cyanide in Tylenol; Woman Dead.” Inquirer, February 11, 1986.
In October of 1982, Dean Mickelson, a pharmacist at the Revco drugstore: “Pharmacies pull drug,” The Taos News: Oct 7, 1982.
An FOIA request was filed with the FDA: Konigstein, David. Response to FOIA Request, File 2011-4678, July 26, 2011.
In 1973, the DOD: “SLEP - The DoD/FDA Shelf Life Extension Program.” Accessed July 10, 2011. https://slep.dmsbfda.army.mil/portal/page/portal/SLEP_PAGE_GRP/SLEP_HOME_NEW
On July 1, 1975, the FDA: “MOU 224-76-8049: Memorandum of Understanding Between The Veterans Administration and The Food and Drug Administration.” June 12, 1975.
Throughout the 1980s, the DOD: DOD Contract with McNeil Consumer Products Company, Round Rock, Texas, Contract number LA12082 C0776, May 1982. – DOD (Air force) Contract with McNeil Consumer Products Co., Glendale, California, Contract number SA13H 77 50158, Fiscal year 1980.

Another futuristic possibility is cloning, the exact duplication of an organism from a body cell (which is diploid, or has a full set of genes, as opposed to a sex cell, which is haploid, or has only a half set of genes). Cloning lower organisms has been accomplished but the barriers to cloning humans are both scientific and ethical. If these barriers go down, cloning may play a significant role in life extension. One of the major problems with organ transplantation is the rejection of foreign tissue. This issue would not exist with duplicate organs from a clone—just raise your clone in a sterile environment to keep the organs healthy, and then replace your own aging parts with the clone's younger, healthier organs.
The ethical questions associated with this scenario are challenging, to say the least.

With what you learn today, we can narrow down our suspicions and follow up by slapping specific datapoenas on Universal Kilns, under the tech-disclosure laws. The beauty of it is that they'll never have a reason to ever link you to our lawsuit."
It makes sense. That is, assuming I don't choose to tell Aeneas Kaolin all about this, just as soon as I pass inside Universal Kilns!
Sure, I'd forfeit my bond and lose most of Albert's hard-won credibility points, but there'd be compensations. Maybe he would make me a subject of his ditto life-extension experiments. I could have more than another twelve hours, maybe lots more!
Huh. Now where did that thought come from? It was almost ... well, frankie ... confusing the more important "I" with the trivial i that's thinking these thoughts.
How bizarre!
Anyway, why daydream about doing things that I'll never do. Or cheap posterities that I'll never win?
"And after the bus station?" Vic Collins prompts.

…

Pairs of giant antennas, facing each other across a cavernous chamber? Hyperconducting terahertz cables, thick as a tree trunk, linking a human original to the distant lump of clay she plans to animate?
Or might UK executives already have perfected the technology? Could they be using it right now, in secret, to "beam" copies of themselves all over the planet?
How about the other breakthroughs that Wammaker and Irene and Collins suspect? Ditto life extension? Ditto-to-ditto copying? Modern wish-fantasies, but what if they're about to come true?
My employers want me to seek evidence, but the other half of my job is just as urgent ... do nothing illegal. Whatever I happen to glimpse by wandering around can be blamed on poor UK security. But I won't pick any locks for Gineen and her friends.
I could lose my license.
Damn. Something's been bugging me all afternoon.

He raised an eyebrow at Eloise. “Is there a panic button under the bar, or were you just masturbating furiously?”
“Panic button, putz.” She paused. “Say, nobody told me about any ersatz juvies. How do I tell if they come in my bar?”
“Go by the room tag manifest for their ages. Don’t assume kids are as young as they look. Or old folks, for that matter. You come from somewhere that restricts life extension rights, don’t you?” Svengali shrugged. “At least most of the Lolitas have a handle on how to behave in public, unlike dumb-as-a-plank there. Damn good thing, that, it can be really embarrassing when the eight-year-old you’re trying to distract with a string of brightly dyed handkerchiefs turns out to have designed the weaving machine that made them. Anyway, who are those people?”
“One minute.”

…

Slowing even more, Elspeth continued thoughtfully: “There was a whole gallery explaining the sequence of conquests that enabled the Eastern Empire to defeat their enemies in the south and get a stranglehold on the remaining independent cornucopia-owning fabwerks. Fascinating stuff.”
“Nothing on the mass graves, I take it,” Rachel observed.
“No.” Elspeth shook her head. “Nor the blank spots on the map of North Transylvania.”
“Ah.” Rachel nodded. “They haven’t gotten around to talking about it yet?”
“Life extension, amnesia extension. It takes longer to admit to the crimes when the criminals are still taking an active role in government.” Elspeth drained her glass, then looked away. “Why were you there?” she murmured.
“War crimes commission. I’d rather not talk about it, thanks.” Rachel finished her drink. “I’d better get back to the embassy to start preparations.” She noticed Elspeth’s expression. “I’m sorry, but we’ve got to get under way as soon as possible.

A big, athletic guy who loved to ski in the California mountains, he had none of the social awkwardness common among Cal Tech students. This active spirit carried over into his intellectual pursuits. When he read the novels of Larry Niven, which discussed the possibility of cryogenically freezing humans and later bringing them back to life, Hal didn’t just ponder the potential in his dorm room. He located a foundation dedicated to making this process a reality and signed up to receive the Alcor Life Extension Foundation’s magazine. Eventually he would pay to have his and his family’s bodies put into Alcor’s frozen vaults near Los Angeles.
The advent of the Internet had been a boon for Hal, allowing him to connect with other people in far-flung places who were thinking about similarly obscure but radical ideas. Even before the invention of the first web browser, Hal joined some of the earliest online communities, with names like the Cypherpunks and Extropians, where he jumped into debates about how new technology could be harnessed to shape the future they all were dreaming up.

In short, this is an industry in which such far-fetched thinking is de rigueur. Some of these people actually believe they will live forever. Peter Thiel, a PayPal cofounder and major early investor in Facebook (and another Rand disciple), has derided the inevitability of death as an “ideology” while plowing millions into companies that might, as he said, “cure aging.” Google’s own forays into life-extension research, through a biotech subsidiary called Calico, reflects its belief that it can solve death—at least for a paying few.
So how does social media fit into these dreams of emancipatory digital technology? Social media is a means to the cyber-libertarian end. That it’s only the latest hyped product to come down the pipe—that the inventors of the telegraph and the telephone and the Internet itself shared similar naïve fantasies—doesn’t seem to matter.

A Medical Dilemma
Back in the early 1980s, before the Internet had even been born, science-fiction writers like Bruce Sterling invented a genre that came to be known as “cyberpunk.” Cyberpunk’s protagonists were usually outlaw computer hackers, battling sinister multinational corporations for control of cyberspace (a term coined by another sci-fi novelist, William Gibson). But in his 1996 novel Holy Fire, Sterling imagines a rather different future: a world ruled by an all-powerful gerontocracy, which appropriates most of the world’s wealth to pay for ever more costly life-extension techniques. And his heroine is, believe it or not, a ninety-four-year-old medical economist.
When the novel first came out, it seemed that Sterling was behind the curve. Public concern over medical costs peaked in 1993, then dropped off sharply. Not only did the Clinton health care plan crash and burn, the long-term upward trend in private medical costs also flattened, as corporations shifted many of their employees into cost-conscious HMOs.

They are pushing the current thresholds of lifespan, health, cognition and capabilities in ways that were previously the preserve of science fiction. As knowledge and discoveries in these fields progress, our focus and commitment to having ongoing moral and ethical discussions is critical. As human beings and as social animals, we will have to think individually and collectively about how we respond to issues such as life extension, designer babies, memory extraction and many more.
At the same time, we must also realize that these incredible discoveries could also be manipulated to serve special interests – and not necessarily those of the public at large. As theoretical physicist and author Stephen Hawking and fellow scientists Stuart Russell, Max Tegmark and Frank Wilczek wrote in the newspaper The Independent when considering the implications of artificial intelligence: “Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all…All of us should ask ourselves what we can do now to improve the chances of reaping the benefits and avoiding the risks”.60
One interesting development in this area is OpenAI, a non-profit AI research company announced in December 2015 with the goal to “advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return”.61 The initiative – chaired by Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator, and Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors - has secured $1 billion in committed funding.

If you ask someone who has never taken the idea of immortality seriously whether they would like to live forever, they are very likely to produce three objections: life as a very old person would be uncomfortable, they would get bored, and the planet would become overcrowded. They might add the notion that death gives meaning to our lives by making them more poignant.
It is extraordinary how few people immediately perceive extended life as a straightforward benefit. Aubrey de Grey, a well-known researcher of radical life extension technologies, thinks we employ a psychological strategy called a “pro-aging trance” to cope with the horror of age and death: we fool ourselves into thinking that death is inevitable and even beneficial.
The first point to make is that we are not talking about extended lives in which we become increasingly decrepit. The technology which would enable us to make death optional would enable us to live at pretty much any physical age we chose – say, our mid-twenties.

Aged eighty-two, Moyra's second thirty-year marriage contract with Ted expires. She decides to leave Ted and move to a "two-generation" family where she joins a new husband and a fifty-two-year-old "child." Presented through a mockumentary and photographic vignettes the project does not offer a design solution or map but serves as a tool for thinking through our own beliefs, values, and priorities when it comes to the pros and cons of extreme life extension.
Jaemin Paik, When We All Live to 750, 2012.
By acting on peoples' imaginations rather than the material world, critical design aims to challenge how people think about everyday life. In doing this, it strives to keep alive other possibilities by providing a counterpoint to the world around us and encouraging us to see that everyday life could be different.
While we are more than ever aware of both the promise and the threat of technological advance, we still lack the intellectual means and the political tools for managing progress.'

pages: 204words: 63,571

You're Not Doing It Right: Tales of Marriage, Sex, Death, and Other Humiliations
by
Michael Ian Black

Anything out of the ordinary poop-wise yields an immediate call to the doctor. I have also begun getting weekly colonoscopies.
I am not going down like that. In fact, I am not going down. The one advantage I have going for me in my mortal battle with Martha is that I plan on living forever. This is no idle statement. Sometimes when I am not looking at pictures of Fat Kevin Federline online, I read articles about advances in gerontology and life extension therapy. Although I comprehend almost none of what I am reading, I am convinced that the work being done in these fields will provide enough breakthroughs within my lifetime to allow me to remain alive for at least a couple of hundred years. At that point, computer technology will have advanced enough to allow us to upload our consciousnesses into a vast, interconnected neural network, which will allow us to “live,” essentially, indefinitely, or at least until somebody accidentally kicks the extension cord out of the wall.

pages: 181words: 52,147

The Driver in the Driverless Car: How Our Technology Choices Will Create the Future
by
Vivek Wadhwa,
Alex Salkever

Medical decisions about very serious illnesses are ultimately human decisions, and for that we still very much need the help of doctors, nurses, and others with true empathy. (It will be a long, long time before A.I. can eliminate these jobs.)
The new era of precision medicine and granular understanding of the interplay of all genetic material and environmental stimuli has enlivened quests for extreme longevity. Google, for example, has launched Calico, a new company focusing on radical life extension; and Craig Venter is one of the cofounders of a company called Human Longevity, which is working on extending the healthy human lifespan through genomics-based stem-cell therapies that mitigate the diseases of aging. Venter’s company is sequencing hundreds of thousands of genomes and incorporating data from functional-MRI scans that capture views of and data from processes inside a living human body in order to match genetic processes with in vivo biological ones.

Not only nuclear weapons but also chemical and biological weapons are steadily becoming cheaper and more easily usable, while genetic engineering is sure to be used to develop methods of genocide that destroy human life selectively on a large scale. In a time when the spread of knowledge makes these technologies ever more accessible death rates could be very high, even among those whose longevity has been artificially enhanced.
Moreover, those who have benefited from life-extension techniques could find themselves in an environment that is increasingly inhospitable to human life. During the present century climate change may alter the conditions in which humans live radically and irreversibly. The survivors could find themselves in a world different from any in which humans have ever lived.
A side-effect of the growth of knowledge, global warming cannot be halted by further scientific advance.

.… All thoughts about consciousness, souls, and the like are bound up equally in faith, which suggests something remarkable: What we are seeing is a new religion, expressed through an engineering culture.” Bill Gates commented, “It seems pretty egocentric while we still have malaria and TB for rich people to fund things so they can live longer.”
But this is not stopping Thiel and Page in their pursuit of everlasting life. As the journalist Charlotte Lytton noted in December of 2015, “The 2045 Initiative—Dmitry Itskov’s life-extension organization seeking to transfer personalities onto non-biological items and, ultimately, immortality—projected that this year could be the first in which such a system was created.” I can’t imagine that Thiel and Page have really thought this concept of immortality through to its logical conclusion. Obviously the treatment would be extremely expensive and only available to the very rich. For the whole of history, the less well off have at least comforted themselves with the thought that death was evenhanded—even John D.

Here’s an additional piece of information that may bring the decision into sharp focus: The surgery extends one’s life, on average, by only six weeks. This number is derived from the average of the forty-seven people whose lives were not extended at all (some were even shortened by complications from the surgery) and the one person whose life was saved by the surgery and has gained five and a half years. The six-week life extension in this case exactly equals the six-week recovery period! The decision, then, can be framed in this way: Do you want to spend those six weeks now, while you’re younger and healthier, lying in bed recovering from a surgery you probably didn’t need? Or would you rather take the six weeks off the end of your life when you’re old and less active?
Many surgical procedures and medication regimens pose just this trade-off: The amount of time in recovery can equal or exceed the amount of life you’re saving.

…

Two objections to this line of thinking are often posed. The first is that talking about averages in a life-or-death decision like this doesn’t make sense because no actual prostate surgery patient has their life extended by the average quoted above of six weeks. One person has his life extended by five and a half years, and forty-seven have their lives extended by nothing at all. This “average” life extension of six weeks is simply a statistical fiction, like the parking example.
It is true, no one person gains by this amount; the average is often a number that doesn’t match a single person. But that doesn’t invalidate the reasoning behind it. Which leads to the second objection: “You can’t evaluate this decision the way you evaluate coin tosses and card games, based on probabilities. Probabilities and expected values are only meaningful when you are looking at many, many trials and many outcomes.”

If you mix it with the Amino Matrix, which is very tart, it buffers the alkalinity of the KetoForce and it ends up tasting quite good.”
TF: A tablespoon of lemon juice (in the water you use to dilute KetoForce) will also work for buffering. If KetoForce is too odd for your stomach, try the powdered KetoCaNa, also developed by Patrick, which I often use before aerobic exercise.
Metformin for Life Extension
Both Patrick Arnold and his frequent collaborator, Dominic D’Agostino, PhD (page 21), are interested in metformin, which is not their creation. Dom considers it the most promising of the anti-aging drugs from a scientific standpoint, and I would estimate that a dozen of the people in this book use it.
In type 2 diabetics (to whom it’s prescribed), metformin decreases the liver’s ability to make and deposit glucose into the bloodstream.

…

He is the founder of OS Fund and Braintree, the latter of which was bought by eBay in 2013 for $800 million in cash. Bryan launched OS Fund in 2014 with $100 million of his personal capital to support inventors and scientists who aim to benefit humanity by rewriting the operating systems of life. In other words: He fuels real-world mad scientists tackling things like asteroid mining, artificial intelligence, life extension, and more. He is currently the founder and CEO of Kernel, which is developing the world’s first neuroprosthesis [brain-implantable computer] to mimic, repair, and improve cognition.
Behind the Scenes
To inspire his kids, Bryan commissioned a graffiti artist to paint Gandalf the Grey and Harry Potter on one of his walls at home. They are pointing their wands skyward and above it all is the word “dream.”

The measurement of illness, Breslow was arguing, is an inherently subjective activity: it inevitably ends up being a measure of ourselves. Objective decisions come to rest on normative ones. Cairns or Bailar could tell us how many absolute lives were being saved or lost by cancer therapeutics. But to decide whether the investment in cancer research was “worth it,” one needed to start by questioning the notion of “worth” itself: was the life extension of a five-year-old “worth” more than the life extension of a sixty-year-old? Even Bailar and Smith’s “most fundamental measure of clinical outcome”—death—was far from fundamental. Death (or at least the social meaning of death) could be counted and recounted with other gauges, often resulting in vastly different conclusions. The appraisal of diseases depends, Breslow argued, on our self-appraisal. Society and illness often encounter each other in parallel mirrors, each holding up a Rorschach test for the other.

For example, free markets might have driven a greater amount of investment in agricultural technology that would improve the quality of food and lower the cost. By having to spend less money on food, individuals might have had more time for leisure activity or more time to exercise, which would have improved their quality of life. A high percentage of medical cost has been the result of artificial incentives, through government policy, to invest in short-term life extension. If you ask me whether I would rather live better now and until I am 85 or live an extra 6 months, I will take now. Furthermore, government bureaucrats do not have the right to make that choice for me.
4. Government regulations must be radically reduced. According to an annual study, the total cost of U.S. federal government regulations in 2008 was $1.75 trillion, which was 12 percent of GDP, 46 percent of total federal spending, and 120 percent of pretax corporate profits, and the cost has been rising by 10 to 15 percent per year in the past decade.7
One way to control the indirect cost of government is to require every government agency to reduce its regulatory rules by 50 percent in 18 months.

In one of my car’s dozen or so computer chips, the algorithm that translates my foot pressure into an effective braking cadence (antilock braking system, or ABS) is far better at avoiding skidding than I am. Google Search has become my virtual assistant, and probably yours too. Life seems better where AI assists. And it could soon be much more. Imagine teams of a hundred Ph.D.-equivalent computers working 24/7 on important issues like cancer, pharmaceutical research and development, life extension, synthetic fuels, and climate change. Imagine the revolution in robotics, as intelligent, adaptive machines take on dangerous jobs like mining, firefighting, soldiering, and exploring sea and space. For the moment, forget the perils of self-improving superintelligence. AGI would be mankind’s most important and beneficial invention.
But what exactly are we talking about when we talk about the magical quality of these inventions, their human-level intelligence?

Salim’s recommendation was no; he believed it would only evoke the same immune system response he’d experienced at Yahoo.
Page’s response was cryptic: “What would a Brickhouse for atoms look like?” he asked.
We now know what he meant. In launching the Google[X] lab, Google has taken the classic skunkworks approach to new product development further than anyone ever imagined. Google[X] offers two fascinating new extensions to the traditional approach. First, it aims for moonshot-quality ideas (e.g., life extension, autonomous vehicles, Google Glass, smart contact lenses, Project Loon, etc.). Second, unlike traditional corporate labs that focus on existing markets, Google[X] combines breakthrough technologies with Google’s core information competencies to create entirely new markets.
We strongly recommend that every big company attempt something similar by creating a lab that is a playground for breakthrough technologies.

He rode one of the walkways, enjoying the warm air, his coat folded over one arm, and wandered into another hotel, the Shamrock. He stopped by the convenience store but saw no magazines or books. He would have liked to buy a chocolate bar, which were on plentiful display, but nobody seemed to be using paper money.
He wondered about himself. He’d be ninety-one now. There was a lot of talk about life extension during the first two decades of the century, but as of 2019 nothing much had happened. It was possible he was still charging around out there, playing tennis, living the good life. If that were true, the Shelborne of 2079 would remember that his younger self had visited Rittenhouse Square on this day. And he’d be here, somewhere, to say hello. Wouldn’t be able to resist that.
It was 11:03 A.M., May 12.

Not many people beyond the Orient know exactly what it is; there is the vaguely terrifying (but not wholly wrong) assumption that it has something to do with the curious activities of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon (a figure of quasi-religious bizarrerie, well known in the West, who is either despised or unknown in Korea). Few people can be precisely certain if ginseng will do them good or harm, if it is an aphrodisiac, a life-extension drug, a sleeping draught, a Menace to Society, or some cunning fungus through whose use the sinister East will subtly extend its dominance over a bewildered and drug-fuddled West. But whatever, it is the symbol of Korea, without a doubt, and it is all made, processed and packed in Puyo, behind the high white walls and guard towers of Number 200, Naeri Street.
It was once all made in Kaesong and exported in huge quantities to a China that had been fascinated with yin-yang restoratives (in which field ginseng claims pre-eminence) since the third millennium BC The Koryo kings were forced to pay levies to the Yuan Dynasty’s Mongol emperors: gold and silver; cloth and grain; falcons, eunuchs, young women—and ginseng, always ginseng.

pages: 407words: 112,767

The Tao of Fully Feeling: Harvesting Forgiveness Out of Blame
by
Pete Walker

My reclaimed anger became the emotional foundation of the assertiveness work that taught me how to protect myself from people who were as unfair as my parents. Role-playing with anger helped restore me to a full ownership of my rights in relationship. This in turn helped me shift my attraction toward people who valued fairness and respect. Truly intimate relationships finally began to flower in my life.
Extensive grieving has convinced me that any interpersonal disappointment, past or present, can be healed by allowing its hurt to flow out through grieving. Nietsche said: “Anything that does not kill us makes us stronger.” I think that grieving is the alchemic process that makes this statement true.
In my experience, the broken heart that has been healed through grieving is stronger and more loving than the one that has never been injured.

.: National Academies Press, 2012).
the first “green” nuclear weapon: A 2007 report claimed that the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) would be “much more than ‘just green.’” The new weapon would reduce “potential harm to the environment and … improve worker safety.” Despite those lofty aims, President Obama eliminated funding for the RRW in 2009. See “Nuclear Warheads: The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program and the Life Extension Program,” Jonathan Medalia, CRS Report for Congress, Congressional Research Service, December 3, 2007, p. 20.
“a money grab”: Peurifoy interview.
a study by JASON scientists: See “Pit Lifetime,” JSR-06-335, MITRE Corporation, January 11, 2007.
“nonsense”: Agnew interview.
The Drell panel expressed concern about these warheads: “The safety issue,” it said, “is whether an accident during handling of an operational missile … might detonate the propellant which in turn could cause the [high explosives] in the warhead to detonate leading to dispersal of plutonium, or even the initiation of a nuclear yield beyond the four-pound criterion.”

She wanted to live a life among friends and peers, live with and love a decent man, raise children to be human beings in a known and familiar place.
I loathed any part of me I had seen reflected in Lenk or Brion. Their smallnesses and failures could easily be my own. Even Brion’s grief for Caitla seemed cheapened by his arrogance, his presumption that people of such a high standing could not die, that some magic must keep them alive.
How did that differ from me? On Thistledown I would undoubtedly opt for juvenation — life extension and even body replacement.
Caitla and Brion had acted on their beliefs, however skewed or inadequate, and so far, I had done nothing — used none of my expertise, exercised none of my (admittedly few) options, managed to always find myself in positions where aloofness was the best choice.
Lenk’s activism had brought his people here and subjected them to immense suffering. Brion’s brash militancy and drive had led to war and murder and had culminated in the madness of the spreading green.

If the powers behind Mirsky had saved her husband, or given him some alternate existence beyond death, then perhaps all things would turn out right after all; perhaps her life, however trivial in the march of millennia and on a scale of light-centuries, would have some use, be worth continuing.
Though not forever.
Garry, whatever his final doubts, had left her this: that age and death and change were natural, even necessary, if not for citizens of the Hexamon, then for those humans who had not seen the slow evolution of life-extension across the centuries.
Someday, she would allow herself to age and die. She smiled, thinking what Ram Kikura might say.
Something rose in the northeast, at the beginning of the violet plume; a bright, twinkling thing that looked less like Thistledown than some distant, continuous fireworks display.
Suddenly, it became as brilliant as a sun, and cast Melbourne into the light of full summer noon.

That’s why technology tends to tip the scales slightly toward the good, even though it produces so many problems. Let’s say we invent a hypothetical new technology that can give immortality to 100 people, but at the cost of killing 1 other person prematurely. We could argue about what the real numbers would have to be to “balance out” (maybe it is 1,000 who never die, or a million, for one who does) but this bookkeeping ignores a critical fact: Because this life-extension technology now exists, there is a new choice between 1 dead and 100 immortal that did not exist before. This additional possibility or freedom or choice—between immortality and death—is good in itself. So even if the result of this particular moral choice (100 immortal = 1 dead) is deemed a wash, the choice itself tips the balance a few percentage points to the good side. Multiply this tiny lean toward good by each of the million, 10 million, or 100 million inventions birthed in technology each year, and you can see why the technium tends to amplify the good slightly more than the evil.

The average dependency ratio for developed countries at the beginning of the century was about 49, while by the middle of the century, it will have grown to 71 (see figure 7.10). Rising dependency ratios actually underestimate the relative cost of population aging because they do not take into account the rising costs of health care in many countries, and particularly the higher costs incurred by the elderly. While progress in medicine is likely to continue to lead to life extension, there is less optimism about arresting neurodegeneration. As a result of living longer, the share of people living with Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and dementia is likely to increase dramatically, compounding the costs and need for elderly care.
The growing burden placed on a shrinking workforce of a rapidly aging population is almost without historical precedent. It presents several difficult policy problems for governments.

.
• Psychological needs – people have certain needs, such as to sleep, eat, and drink
in this category. So, we see advertisements for food, drink, sleep aids, medicine,
and so forth that address these psychological desires.
Potpourri: In the book, CA$HVERTISING, Drew Eric Whitman [60] outlines
eight Life Forces that are human’s biologically programmed desires.
1. Survival enjoyment of life … life extension
2. Enjoyment of food and beverages
3. Freedom from fear, pain, and danger
4. Sexual companionship
5. Comfortable living conditions
6. To be superior … winning … keeping up with the Joneses
7. Care and protection of loved ones
8. Social approval
Whitman [60] also outlines nine Secondary Wants, which are as follows:
1. To be informed
2. Curiosity
3. Cleanliness of body and surroundings
4.

id=D8LN0P6G1&show article=1.
The worldwide obesity numbers come from http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/obesity/en/index.html. A very helpful article here was Jane E. Brody, “As America Gets Bigger, the World Does, Too,” New York Times, April 19, 2005.
Mexican data come from “Obesity on the Rise in Mexico,” The Economist, December 18, 2004.
Starving for Life
The Cornell and subsequent research on life extension through calorie restriction, as well as the effects of such diets, are summarized in Michael Mason, “One for the Ages: A Prescription That May Extend Life,” New York Times, October 31, 2006; and David Schardt, “Eat Less Live Longer?,” Nutrition Action Healthletter, Center for Science in the Public Interest, September 1, 2003.
The Biosphere story is told in Julian Dibbell, “Super Skinny Me,” The Observer (London), December 3, 2006.

When it rolls out, sometime in the late 2020s, an artificial intelligence’s passing of the Turing Test will be a mere footnote to this singularity’s impact—which will be, he says, to generate a “radical transformation of the reality of human experience” by the 2040s.
Utopian? Not really. Kurzweil is careful to lay out the downsides of his vision. Apocalpytic? Who knows—the Singularity’s consequences are, by definition, inconceivable to us pre-Singularitarians. Big? You bet.
It’s easy to make fun of the wackier dimension of Kurzweil’s digital eschatology. His personal program of life extension via a diet of 220 pills per day—to pickle his fifty-something wetware until post-Singularity medical breakthroughs open the door to full immortality—sounds more like something out of a late-night commercial pitch than a serious scientist’s choice. Yet Kurzweil’s record of technological future-gazing has so far proven reliable; his voice is a serious one. And when he argues that “in the short term we always underestimate how hard things are, but in the long term we underestimate how big changes are,” he has history on his side.

Rajinder Sohal, world leaders in studies of low-calorie diets, wrote about the Okinawans in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1997, they pointed to the low (by American standards) caloric intake of the elder Okinawans as a key factor in their outstanding health and life expectancy.26 Similarly, Professor Yasuo Kagawa of Jichi Medical School, who has studied the Okinawans, attributes their longevity and health primarily to the relatively low amount of overall calories they consume.27
These researchers have good reason for thinking this way. One of the most remarkable findings of modern scientific research is that no intervention, including the elimination of smoking, has been found to be as important in overall life extension as cutting back on calories while maximizing dietary nutrients.
Many researchers have contributed to the development of this understanding, but few more than Roy Walford, M.D., who has long been recognized internationally as one of the top experts in the field of gerontology. His research at UCLA was funded for more than thirty-five years by the National Institutes of Health, and he published more than 350 articles on aging and health in medical journals.

Most of the time it will amount to little more than making note of certain things and telling us about them —but occasionally, if there is a serious threat, you may be asked to act. Usually in subtle, undetectable ways, but always at your peril. But there are compensations."
"Describe them." Martin put his unfinished drink down at that point.
"My sponsor is prepared to pay you very well indeed. And part of the pay—we can smooth the path if you apply for prolongation and continued residency." Life-extension technology, allowing effectively unlimited life expectancy beyond 160 years, was eminently practical, and available on most developed worlds. It was also as tightly controlled as any medical procedure could be. The controls and licensing were a relic of the Overshoot, the brief period in the twenty-first century when Earth's population blipped over the ten-billion mark (before the Singularity, when the Eschaton bootstrapped its way past merely human intelligence and promptly rewrote the rule book).

I have a grandson, also named Jack, who visits me on weekends, and who is the best grandson in the world.
My plans keep me busy. That frustrated engineer inside me is getting out more often. I’m writing, too. Upcoming is a book about the invention of vertical flight, a screen-play about Bill Reeder’s survival as a POW in Vietnam, a third Solo novel, and a movie I want to write and produce myself.
Where do I file for a life extension?
Robert Mason
High Springs, Florida
October 10, 2004
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The earliest known actuarial report of smokers dying, on average, earlier than nonsmokers appears in the Proceedings of the Association of Life Insurance Medical Directors (New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1912), pp. 473–75, where Edwin Wells Dwight, chairman of the Medical Directors’ Association, presented data from 180,000 New England Mutual policyholders showing that “tobacco abstainers” had a 43 percent lower mortality than expected from American Experience Tables. Ten years later, a Life Extension Institute study of Dartmouth College graduates (class of 1868) showed smokers dying about seven years earlier than non-smokers; see Cassandra Tate, Cigarette Wars: The Triumph of the Little White Slaver (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 143.
62. Maurine B. Neuberger, Smoke Screen: Tobacco and the Public Welfare (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 6. Earl T. Opstad, assistant medical director at Northwestern National Life Insurance Co., in 1963 published a calculation of how many people must be dying prematurely as a result of smoking.